MVN - Most Valuable Network

How can Twins handle July’s schedule?

After Sunday, the fun is over.

Interleague play is done for the season.

The Twins have a new lease on life after inflating their record against National League teams, which is how they had their 10-game winning streak, which was snapped Saturday night. They finished the two and a half week stretch of interleague play with a record of 13-2, which padded their record to 45-37. The Twins are in the AL Central race as they are 1.5 games back behind the White Sox.

Now, here comes reality.

The Twins are back to playing American League baseball, and July’s schedule does not do them any favors.

On Monday night, they start a three-game series with the red-hot Detroit Tigers, who remarkably have come all the way back from the dead to be an above .500 team. The Tigers are finally hitting, and their pitching has been efficient. It was written here that the Tigers were done, and that they would finish the season in last place. Now, everything has worked out and they are primed to make a run.

Then, they face an underachieving Indians team, who still has the talent to win the division, in the weekend.

It gets even harder next week.

The Twins go to a hostile environment at Fenway Park to face the Red Sox, who rarely lose there. They finish the pre-All-Star break by playing the Tigers at Comerica Park.

After the All-Star break, they face the Texas Rangers, who are no slouch at all.

Then, they go out on the road to face the Yankees and the Indians.

They wrap up the month by facing the White Sox at home.

How can the Twins beat them?

Good starting pitching, but that’s a problem there because the Twins’ starters have not fared well against hitting teams all season. The starters have done well lately, but they were doing this against the NL teams. The starters have struggled against AL hitting teams all season. They have given up home runs against them this season. With the Twins facing AL hitting teams in July, this can’t be good for the Twins starters unless they applied what they learn from getting the NL teams out. If they can have that same success against AL teams, then the team may have a special thing going.

One thing going for the Twins is that they have an ace in Scott Baker. If Kevin Slowey can pitch well as he did in his two starts this week (San Diego and Milwaukee), he and Baker could form a 1-2 duo, which is an important ingredient of a championship team. That’s a big if of course.

The hitting will be fine.

The question is starting pitching.

It will be answered by the end of the month. That answer will dictate what the Twins do for the rest of the season.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.